What is FBML?

FBML is Facebook’s mark-up language but these elements will take any HTML as well. So you have the ability to add newsletter sign-up forms, e-book downloads, and other HTML based elements. It is shown as easy to pick up. You certainly should be already familiar with HTML. It is a great solution for a complicated problem, and continues to be useful.

It is like HTML, but it lets you include social content inline in your markup. It is Facebook’s version of HTML, the language that web pages are written in. For the most part, knowledge of HTML is all that is needed to utilize the functionality of the Static FBML application.

It is a modified version of HTML with some features discarded and other, Facebook-specific attributes added. Some CSS attributes are deleted for security reasons, and it has a set of unique tags you will be required to learn to create apps properly. It isn’t a “proprietary language,” it’s a set of tags added to HTML that make it easier to write social apps. With it, I can show or hide elements of the page based on whether two users are friends – it’s a simple tag that Facebook handles on their side. It is amazing; it’s so great to be able to have YouTube videos on your Facebook page. I have been doing a lot of research recently.

It is an evolved subset of HTML with some elements removed, and others which have been added that are specific to Facebook. You set the FBML for a profile box by calling profile.setFBML through the API. It is a coding language that lets you custom builds these Facebook Platform apps. So if you know HTML, FBML is not too far off.

It is where the new version of the Facebook platform gets interesting and begins to separate itself from other simple widget platforms. It is great, and for some parts of your app you will want to use it, but the fact you can’t debug it makes life extremely difficult. If you can get all your code working with iframes first, then it will be relatively easy to switch some bits to it when the time comes. It is a way for computer programmers to develop advanced pages and applications within a Fan Page. This is what you will be using to display you custom landing page.

It is not a completely new language. It allows the use of regular HTML tags making it extremely flexible for the programmer building the application or feature. It is a superset of HTML and ads on to HTML’s features, basically letting you easily add Facebook specific details. The example application is immensely simple, but it gives you a quick look at it, giving you an idea of what it can do and how it does it. It is only used in profile boxes and Facebook-rendered canvas pages – developers can also use iframe canvas pages or non-Facebook sites/applications. Pretty much everything else client-side for a Facebook application is HTML, CSS, etc.

It is like HTML with certain restrictions and added features specific to Facebook. The theme is included with the module, but it has to be moved to a themes folder. It is called again through a canvas page. For a high-level technical specification for FBML, provisions have been given. It is another XML variant, a proprietary Facebook tag system to pass information from a database to the Facebook interface.